Hogwarts Read The Books
by TwilighterCharmed
Summary: Umbridge recieves four books from the future and decides that it's time Potter's lies come out...but will she get what she's hoping for? R&R
1. Umbridge's Plan

Umbridge's Plan

Umbridge stormed into her office angrily.

How dare he give a bloody interview! As if enough people didn't believe his story! She paced furiously, getting angrier and angrier by the second. If only there was a way to expose the his lies!

She froze, catching a glimpse of something that hadn't been there before. She turned and walked towards it causiously. It was a stack of books.

She frowned, glancing at the title of the first one.

**Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire**

Her frown deepend. She picked it up and underneath was three more books; **Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix**, **Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince **and **Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows**.

Was this some sort of trick? Maybe it was Potter's idea - the Granger girl is smart enough to come up with it.

Her small hands tightened around the book in her hand before she forced herself to relax and read the note left on her desk.

_Dear Professor Umbridge,_

_You must be wondering why you have recieved four books about your least favourite student, right? Well, the answer is simple. You wish to tell everyone the truth and these books are the truth._

_They are the thoughts of Harry James Potter throughout four years of his life, starting with last year and going into the future. These books do not lie and can't be tampered with._

_Enjoy, AP_

A slow smirk appeared on the toad like womans face.

...

"Why do you think the toad summoned us here?" Fred asked as they all sat down in the great hall.

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "I thought you'd know."

"Us?" George asked confused. "We haven't done anything...we don't think."

"Whatever's going on, I don't like the smug looks on Umbridge's and Fudge's faces." Harry said, staring up at them.

"Hem hem." Umbridge said, standing up and - although no one liked her - all eyes turned in her direction, wanting to know what was going on. "I have recieved four books. These four books are the life of Mr Potter. His thoughts and secrets, including what really happened last summer."

The hall was filled with whispered; some of them excited, some of them gleefull, some of them disgusted.

The teachers glared darkly at Umbridge's back, all of them wishing for a way to get rid of this women.

Harry's heart dropped. "Can she do that?" he asked Hermione, who looked completely lost.

"I don't know." She said back weakly and he sighed.

"Well, on the bright side, everything will be out in the open." Ron said, trying to cheer his best mate up.

"Yeah." Harry grumbled as Umbridge sat back down and picked up the first book.


	2. The Riddle House

The Riddle House

"Hem hem." Umbridge said and it was immediately silent, most people excited while the others were wary. "The first book if called '**Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire**.'"

She sat back down and opened the book. "**The Riddle House**," she read.

Harry and his friends shared a glance.

**The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it "the Riddle House," even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.**

**It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face.**

"Who would want to live there?" A fifth year asked loudly.

**Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied.**

"Not that surprising." Leo scoffed.

**The Little Hagletons all agreed that the old house was "creepy." Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. **

"Blood heck, muggles must have very boring lives to _still _be gossiping about something that happened years ago!" A Slytherin muttered.

**The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.**

**The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused as many people as she could.**

**"Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!"**

"Sounds like the killing curse." Hermione whispered grimly.

**The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been, if anything, worse. **

"Lovely family." Ron said sarcastically to Harry who rolled his eyes.

"What do you expect when they're related to Voldemort?"

**All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer — for plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night.**

**The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested.**

**"Frank!" cried several people. "Never!"**

**Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since.**

**There was a rush to buy the cook drinks and hear more details.**

**"Always thought he was odd," she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. "Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered him a cuppa once, I've offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didn't."**

**"Ah, now," said a woman at the bar, "he had a hard war, Frank. He likes the quiet life. That's no reason to —"**

**"Who else had a key to the back door, then?" barked the cook. "There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping…"**

**The villagers exchanged dark looks.**

"Funny how easy it is for people to turn against someone due to some rumors." Hermione said darkly. Those in the DA who had not believed Harry looked down ashamed.

**"I always thought that he had a nasty look about him, right enough," grunted a man at the bar.**

**"War turned him funny, if you ask me," said the landlord.**

**"Told you I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn't I, Dot?" said an excited woman in the corner.**

**"Horrible temper," said Dot, nodding fervently. "I remember, when he was a kid…"**

**By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles. But over in the neighboring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. **

"A teenager?" Hermione exclaimed, looking at Ron and Harry with wide eyes. "He'd first killed when he was a teenager?"

"He opened the chamber of secrets when he was a teenager." Harry pointed out and Ginny, who was sitting next to Hermione and listening in, shivered at the reminder of the horrible place.

Hermione sighed, she still couldn't get her head around how someone could be so evil.

**Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure Frank had invented him.**

**Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything. The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment), the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health — apart from the fact that they were all dead.**

"That's a good way of putting it." A Ravenclaw muttered.

**The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of terror upon his or her face**

A lot of people grimaced at this fact. The Riddle's may not have been very pleasant but they didn't deserve to be murdered.

**- but as the frustrated police said, whoever heard of three people being frightened to death?**

**As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Frank go.**

**The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyone's surprise, and amid a cloud of suspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House.**

**"As far as I'm concerned, he killed them, and I don't care what the police say," said Dot in the Hanged Man. "And if he had any decency, he'd leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it."**

**But Frank did not leave. **

"Good for him!" Someone shouted firmly.

**He stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next — for neither family stayed long.**

**Perhaps it was partly because of Frank that the new owners said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into disrepair.**

**The wealthy man who owned the Riddle House these days neither lived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that he kept it for "tax reasons," though nobody was very clear what these might be. The wealthy owner continued to pay Frank to do the gardening, however. Frank was nearing his seventy-seventh birthday now, very deaf, his bad leg stiffer than ever, but could be seen pottering around the flower beds in fine weather, even though the weeds were starting to creep up on him, try as he might to suppress them.**

"Why isn't this about Potter?" Fudge hissed to Umridge.

She answered in her sickly sweet voice that made even him cringe. "I'm sure it will come up soon."

**Weeds were not the only things Frank had to contend with either. Boys from the village made a habit of throwing stones through the windows of the Riddle House. They rode their bicycles over the lawns Frank worked so hard to keep smooth. Once or twice, they broke into the old house for a dare. They knew that old Frank's devotion to the house and the grounds amounted almost to an obsession, and it amused them to see him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling croakily at them. **

McGonagall tutted. She hated children like that!

**Frank, for his part, believed the boys tormented him because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought him a murderer. So when Frank awoke one night in August and saw something very odd up at the old house, he merely assumed that the boys had gone one step further in their attempts to punish him.**

**It was Frank's bad leg that woke him; it was paining him worse than ever in his old age. He got up and limped downstairs into the kitchen with the idea of refilling his hot-water bottle to ease the stiffness in his knee. Standing at the sink, filling the kettle, he looked up at the Riddle House and saw lights glimmering in its upper windows. Frank knew at once what was going on. The boys had broken into the house again, and judging by the flickering quality of the light, they had started a fire.**

"I seriously doubt that." Ginny whispered, glancing at Harry.

**Frank had no telephone, in any case, he had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken him in for questioning about the Riddles' deaths. **

"Don't blame him." Harry whispered, feeling the same about the Ministry.

**He put down the kettle at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as his bad leg would allow, and was soon back in his kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from its hook by the door. He picked up his walking stick, which was propped against the wall, and set off into the night.**

**The front door of the Riddle House bore no sign of being forced, nor did any of the windows. Frank limped around to the back of the house until he reached a door almost completely hidden by ivy, took out the old key, put it into the lock, and opened the door noiselessly.**

**He let himself into the cavernous kitchen. Frank had not entered it for many years; nevertheless, although it was very dark, he remembered where the door into the hall was, and he groped his way towards it, his nostrils full of the smell of decay, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps or voices from overhead.**

"Maybe he should just leave." A Hufflepuff whispered to her friend who nodded in agreement.

**He reached the hall, which was a little lighter owing to the large mullioned windows on either side of the front door, and started to climb the stairs, blessing the dust that lay thick upon the stone, because it muffled the sound of his feet and stick. On the landing, Frank turned right, and saw at once where the intruders were: At the every end of the passage a door stood ajar, and a flickering light shone through the gap, casting a long sliver of gold across the black floor. Frank edged closer and closer, he was able to see a narrow slice of the room beyond.**

**The fire, he now saw, had been lit in the grate. This surprised him. Then he stopped moving and listened intently, for a man's voice spoke within the room; it sounded timid and fearful.**

**"There is a little more in the bottle, My Lord, if you are still hungry."**

Dumbledore glanced at Harry swiftly, looking at him directly for the first time in months, before looking away just as quickly.

**"Later," said a second voice. This too belonged to a man — but it was strangely high-pitched, and cold as a sudden blast of icy wind. Something about that voice made the sparse hairs on the back of Frank's neck stand up. "Move me closer to the fire, Wormtail."**

The DA looked over at Harry before looking fearfull when Harry nodded his head slightly. It was almost as if _he _was there in the room.

**Frank turned his right ear toward the door, the better to hear. There came the clink of a bottle being put down upon some hard surface, and then the dull scraping noise of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. Frank caught a glimpse of a small man, his back to the door, pushing the chair into place. He was wearing a long black cloak, and there was a bald patch at the back of his head. **

Both Harry and Ron glared at the book while Hermione clenched her fists.

**Then he went out of sight again.**

**"Where is Nagini?" said the cold voice.**

**"I — I don't know, My Lord," said the first voice nervously. "She set out to explore the house, I think…"**

**"You will milk her before we retire, Wormtail," said the second voice. "I will need feeding in the night. The journey has tired me greatly."**

Those who knew what was happening looked sick.

"He drinks snake milk?" Ron exclaimed, making a lot of people pull a face.

Harry looked thoughtfull. "Could explain why he looks like a snake."

**Brow furrowed, Frank inclined his good ear still closer to the door, listening very hard. There was a pause, and then the man called Wormtail spoke again.**

**"My Lord, may I ask how long we are going to stay here?"**

**"A week," said the cold voice. "Perhaps longer. The place is moderately comfortable, and the plan cannot proceed yet. It would be foolish to act before the Quidditch World Cup is over."**

**Frank inserted a gnarled finger into his ear and rotated it. Owing, no doubt, to a buildup of earwax, he had heard the word "Quidditch," which was not a word at all.**

Most pure bloods frowned. "Yes it is!" Malfoy yelled. Hermione rolled her eyes - and he had the nerve to call muggles stupid!

"Not to muggles!"

**"The — the Quidditch World Cup, My Lord?" said Wormtail. (Frank dug his finger still more vigorously into his ear.) "Forgive me, but — I do not understand – why should we wait until the World Cup is over?"**

**"Because, fool, at this very moment wizards are pouring into the country from all over the world, and every meddler from the Ministry of Magic will be on duty, on the watch for signs of unusual activity, checking and double-checking identities. They will be obsessed with security, lest the Muggles notice anything. So we wait."**

Fudge, who had been rather bored, looked a lot more interested now that the Ministry of Magic was mentioned.

**Frank stopped trying to clear out his ear. He had distinctly heard the words "Ministry of Magic," "wizards," and "Muggles." Plainly, each of these expressions meant something secret, and Frank could think of only two sorts of people who would speak in code: spies and criminals.**

"He was right on the criminals." Harry muttered.

"And with Wormtail on the spy part," Ron whispered back, "though he's thirteen years too late."

**Frank tightened his hold on his walking stick once more, and listened more closely still.**

**"Your Lordship is still determined, then?" Wormtail said quietly.**

**"Certainly I am determined, Wormtail." There was a note of menace in the cold voice now.**

**A slight pause followed — and the Wormtail spoke, the words tumbling from him in a rush, as though he was forcing himself to say this before he lost his nerve.**

**"It could be done without Harry Potter, My Lord."**

All eyes turned to Harry while he and his friends shared a surprised and suspicious look.

**Another pause, more protracted, and then —**

**"Without Harry Potter?" breathed the second voice softly. "I see…"**

**"My Lord, I do not say this out of concern for the boy!" said Wormtail, his voice rising squeakily. "The boy is nothing to me, nothing at all! **

"It's a good thing Padfoot isn't here," Hermione whispered to Harry, "he'd be furious to hear that even though he knows it's true."

**It is merely that if we were to use another witch or wizard — any wizard — the thing could be done so much more quickly! If you allowed me to leave you for a short while — you know that I can disguise myself most effectively — I could be back here in as little as two days with a suitable person —"**

**"I could use another wizard," said the cold voice softly, "that is true…"**

"Then why didn't you?" Ron said through his teeth, glaring at the book as he remembered his best friends nightmares following the event last year.

**"My Lord, it makes sense," said Wormtail, sounding thoroughly relieved now. "Laying hands on Harry Potter would be so difficult, he is so well protected —"**

**"And so you volunteer to go and fetch me a substitute? I wonder… perhaps the task of nursing me has become wearisome for you, Wormtail? Could this suggestion of abandoning the plan be nothing more than an attempt to desert me?"**

"But, if he was going to do that, what was the point in finding him?" Fred frowned.  
>"He is very paranoid, isn't he?" his twin commented.<p>

**"My Lord! I — I have no wish to leave you, none at all —"**

**"Do not lie to me!" hissed the second voice. "I can always tell, Wormtail! You are regretting that you ever returned to me. I revolt you. I see you flinch when you look at me, feel you shudder when you touch me…"**

"Oh, now I can understand why he feels that way."  
>"You can understand how Voldemort is feeling?" Hermione raised an eyebrow at the twins who pretended that they hadn't heard her.<p>

**"No! My devotion to Your Lordship —"**

**"Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. You would not be here if you had anywhere else to go. How am I to survive without you, when I need feeding every few hours? Who is to milk Nagini?"**

**"But you seem so much stronger, My Lord —"**

**"Liar," breathed the second voice. "I am no stronger, and a few days alone would be enough to rob me of the little health I have regained under your clumsy care. Silence!"**

**Wormtail, who had been sputtering incoherently, fell silent at once. For a few seconds, Frank could hear nothing but the fire crackling. Then the second man spoke once more, in a whisper that was almost a hiss.**

**"I have my reasons for using the boy, as I have already explained to you, and I will use no other. I have waited thirteen years. A few more months will make no difference. As for the protection surrounding the boy, I believe my plan will be effective. All that is needed is a little courage from you, Wormtail — courage you will find, unless you wish to feel the full extent of Lord Voldermort's wrath —"**

You could hear a pin drop in the great hall after that. Fudge and Umbridge had gone pale and so had the few that still hadn't believed Harry after his interview.

**"My Lord, I must speak!" said Wormtail, panic in his voice now. "All through our journey I have gone over the plan in my head — My Lord, Bertha Jorkin's**

Harry froze. He had forgotten that he had heard Bertha's name the first time round.

**disappearance will not go unnoticed for long, and if we proceed, if I murder —"**

**"If?" whispered the second voice. "If? If you follow the plan, Wormtail, the Ministry need never know that anyone else has died. You will do it quietly and without fuss; I only wish that I could do it myself, but in my present condition… Come, Wormtail, one more death and our path to Harry Potter is clear. I am not asking you to do it alone. By that time, my faithful servant will have rejoined us —"**

**"I am a faithful servant," said Wormtail, the merest trace of sullenness in his voice.**

**"Wormtail, I need somebody with brains, somebody whose loyalty has never wavered, and you, unfortunately, fulfill neither requirement."**

**"I found you," said Wormtail, and there was definitely a sulky edge to his voice now. "I was the one who found you. I brought you Bertha Jorkins."**

**"That is true," said the second man, sounding amused. "A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, Wormtail — though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful she would be when you caught her, were you?"**

**"I — I thought she might be useful, My Lord —"**

**"Liar," said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever. "However, I do not deny that her information was invaluable. Without it, I could never have formed our plan, and for that, you will have your reward, Wormtail. I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers would give their right hands to perform…"**

**"R-really, My Lord? What —?" Wormtail sounded terrified again.**

**"Ah, Wormtail, you don't want me to spoil the surprise? Your part will come at the very end… but I promise you, you will have the honor of being just as useful as Bertha Jorkins."**

**"You… you…" Wormtail's voice suddenly sounded hoarse, as though his mouth had gone very dry. "You… are going… to kill me too?"**

**"Wormtail, Wormtail," said the cold voice silkily, "why would I kill you? I killed Bertha because I had to. She was fit for nothing after my questioning, quite useless. In any case, awkward questions would have been asked if she had gone back to the Ministry with the news that she had met you on her holidays. Wizards who are supposed to be dead would do well not to run into Ministry of Magic witches at wayside inns…"**

**Wormtail muttered something so quietly that Frank could not hear it, but it made the second man laugh — an entirely mirthless laugh, cold as his speech.**

**"We could have modified her memory? But Memory Charms can be broken by a powerful wizard, as I proved when I questioned her. It would be an insult to her memory not to use the information I extracted from her, Wormtail."**

**Out in the corridor, Frank suddenly became aware that the hand gripping his walking stick was slippery with sweat. The man with the cold voice had killed a woman. He was talking about it without any kind of remorse — with amusement. He was dangerous — a madman. And he was planning more murders — this boy, Harry Potter, whoever he was — was in danger — Frank knew what he must do. Now, if ever, was the time to go to the police.**

**He would creep out of the house and head straight for the telephone box in the village… but the cold voice was speaking again, and Frank remained where he was, frozen to the spot, listening with all his might.**

**"One more murder… my faithful servant at Hogwarts… Harry Potter is as good as mine, Wormtail. It is decided. There will be no more argument. But quiet… I think I hear Nagini…"**

**And the second man's voice changed. He started making noises such as Frank had never heard before; he was hissing and spitting without drawing breath. **

Harry frowned. "Is that what I sound like when I speak in parseltongue?" he asked his friends quietly and they all nodded.

**Frank thought he must be having some sort of fit or seizure.**

**And then Frank heard movement behind him in the dark passageway. He turned to look, and found himself paralyzed with fright. Something was slithering toward him along the dark corridor floor, and as it drew nearer to the sliver of firelight, he realized with a thrill of terror that it was a gigantic snake, at least twelve feet long.**

Fred sighed sadly. "And it's seen him so he's dead."

**Horrified, transfixed, Frank stared as its undulating body cut a wide, curving track through the thick dust on the floor, coming closer and closer — What was he to do? The only means of escape was into the room where the two men sat plotting murder, yet if he stayed where he was the snake would surely kill him —**

**But before he had made his decision, the snake was level with him, and then, incredibly, miraculously, it was passing; it was following the spitting, hissing noises made by the cold voice beyond the door, and in seconds, the tip of its diamond-patterned tail had vanished through the gap.**

**There was sweat on Frank's forehead now, and the hand on the walking stick was trembling. Inside the room, the cold voice was continuing to hiss, and Frank was visited by a strange idea, an impossible idea… This man could talk to snakes. Frank didn't understand what was going on. He wanted more than anything to be back in his bed with his hot-water bottle. The problem was that his legs didn't seem to want to move. As he stood there shaking and trying to master himself, the cold voice switched abruptly to English again.**

**"Nagini has interesting news, Wormtail," it said.**

**"In-indeed, My Lord?" said Wormtail.**

**"Indeed, yes," said the voice, "According to Nagini, there is an old Muggle standing right outside this room, listening to every word we say."**

Three quarters of the great hall groaned. Malfoy, on the other hand, shrugged. "Serves him right for being a disgusting, nosey muggle." He whispered to Crabbe and Goyle quietly, so no one would overhear.

**Frank didn't have a chance to hide himself. There were footsteps and then the door of the room was flung wide open.**

**A short, balding man with graying hair, a pointed nose, and small, watery eyes stood before Frank, a mixture of fear and alarm in his face.**

**"Invite him inside, Wormtail. Where are your manners?" The cold voice was coming from the ancient armchair before the fire, but Frank couldn't see the speaker. The snake, on the other hand, was curled up on the rotting hearth rug, like some horrible travesty of a pet dog. Wormtail beckoned Frank into the room. Though still deeply shaken, Frank took a firmer grip on his walking stick and limped over the threshold.**

**The fire was the only source of light in the room; it cast long, spidery shadows upon the walls. Frank stared at the back of the armchair; the man inside it seemed to be even smaller than his servant, for Frank couldn't even see the back of his head.**

**"You heard everything, Muggle?" said the cold voice.**

**"What's that you're calling me?" said Frank defiantly, for now that he was inside the room, now that the time had come for some sort of action, he felt braver; it had always been so in the war.**

**"I am calling you a Muggle," said the voice coolly. "It means that you are not a wizard."**

**"I don't know what you mean by wizard," said Frank, his voice growing steadier. "All I know is I've heard enough to interest the police tonight, I have. You've done murder and you're planning more! And I'll tell you this too," he added, on a sudden inspiration, "my wife knows I'm up here, and if I don't come back —"**

**"You have no wife," said the cold voice, very quietly. "Nobody knows you are here. You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Muggle, for he knows… he always knows…"**

Everyone leaned further forward in their seats, eager to hear what was going to happen next. Ginny tutted in disgust, they were about to hear someone be murdered and they actually _wanted _to listen!

**"Is that right?" said Frank roughly. "Lord, is it? Well, I don't think much of your manners, My Lord. Turn 'round and face me like a man, why don't you?"**

**"But I am not a man, Muggle," said the cold voice, barely audible now over the crackling of the flames. "I am much, much more than a man. However… why not? I will face you… Wormtail, come turn my chair around."**

**The servant gave a whimper.**

**"You heard me, Wormtail."**

**Slowly, with his face screwed up, as though he would rather have done anything than approach his master and the hearth rug where the snake lay, the small man walked forward and began to turn the chair. **

Everyone was practically hanging of their seats by now, their eyes transfixed on the book in the toads hands.

**The snake lifted its ugly triangular head and hissed slightly as the legs of the chair snagged on its rug.**

**And then the chair was facing Frank, and he saw what was sitting in it. His walking stick fell to the floor with a clatter. He opened his mouth and let out a scream. He was screaming so loudly that he never heard the words the thing in the chair spoke as it raised a wand. There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and Frank Bryce crumpled. He was dead before he hit the floor.**

**Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start.**

"What?" someone said confused.

"It was just a dream?" another person asked.

The Weasleys, Hermione and Harry shared a look but none of them said anything and ignored interested glances from people around them.

_And now we get to the good stuff, _Delores Umbridge thought, not at all bothered that she had just read about someone's death (whether it was a dream or not). She shot Harry one last gloating smirk before turning to the next page.

"**The Scar**," she read loudly, gaining back everyone's attention and Harry sighed softly, tracing the lightning bolt scar with a finger.


	3. The Scar

The Scar

**Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.**

Everyone cringed, that must've felt horrible.

"Is it always like that?" Ginny asked quietly.

Harry grimaced. "It's been worse."

**He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other hand reaching out in the darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. He put them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window.**

**Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. He examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal, but it was still stinging.**

**Harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It had seemed so real… There had been two people he knew and one he didn't… He concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember… The dim picture of a darkened room came to him… There had been a snake on a hearth rug… a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail…**

Once again, the people that knew, scowled at the name.

**and a cold, high voice… the voice of Lord Voldemort. **

"It was just a dream." Umbridge said in a sickly sweet voice that made people either want to be sick or hex her. Many came close to doing the last option.

**Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped down into his stomach at the very thought…**

**He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible… All Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt a spasm of horror, which had awoken him… or had that been the pain in his scar?**

**And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. Harry put his face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them… Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Harry could not remember the name… and they had been plotting to kill someone else… him!**

"This must've been how he came up with the idea of saying You-Know-Who was back." Fudge said, earning him glares from people who believe in the boy-who-lived aswell as nods from the (even less) people who didn't.

**Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes, and stared around his bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened, there was an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black robes, and assorted spell books.**

"They didn't take them off you?" Ron asked surprised.

Harry smiled widely. "I had a brilliant plan that year." Ron waited for his friend to explain but gave up after it became obvious that Harry wasn't going to tell him.

**Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; Harry had been reading it before he fell asleep last night. **

The twins gasped comically. "You were _reading_?" They exclaimed, pretending like their world was ending.

"What's wrong with reading?" Hermione frowned. The twins looked at her with innocence and she rolled her eyes.

**The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks, throwing a red ball to one another.**

The twins let out loud gasps of relief that made most of the great hall laugh. Even Hermione had to smile.

**Harry walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched on of the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty-foot-high hoop. Then he snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch — in Harry's opinion, the best sport in the world — couldn't distract him at the moment. **

Ron - who shared his mates passion for quidditch - looked at him wide eyed. "Bloody hell, this must've gotten to you a lot."

**He placed Flying with the Cannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window, and drew back the curtains to survey the street below.**

**Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.**

**And yet… and yet… Harry went restlessly back to the bed and sat down on it, running a finger over his scar again. It wasn't the pain that bothered him; Harry was no stranger to pain and injury.**

**He had lost all the bones from his right arm once and had them painfully re-grown in a night. **

Some of the Slytherin's snorted at this reminder while the Gryffindors glared.

"Oh, I remember." Ginny said loudly, making everyone turn to her. "This is when we crushed the snakes at quidditch!"

The Gryffindors now smirked over at the Slytherins who glared back.

**The same arm had been pierced by a venomous foot-long fang not long afterward. **

"What?" Hermione exclaimed as all eyes turned to Harry. Even Dumbledore looked surprised as Harry had neglected to tell him that.

"I'll explain after the book." Harry said, secretly hoping that they'll forget.

**Only last year Harry had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick. **

Most of the great hall grimaced while the others (mostly Slytherins) snickered.

**He was used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry **

Everyone was staring at him.

"Mr Potter, there are many people who manage to stay out of trouble and not get hurt all year. I think _you _are the only one who doesn't." McGonagall said, looking torn between annoyance and amusement. Harry blushed.

**and had a knack for attracting a lot of trouble.**

"Ah, that's better." Ginny said.

**No, the thing that was bothering Harry was the last time his scar had hurt him, it had been because Voldemort had been close by… **

"Lies." Umbridge sang, ignoring the glares that were being sent her way.

**But Voldemort couldn't be here, now… The idea of Voldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impossible…**

**Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half expecting to hear the creak of a stair or the swish of a cloak? And then he jumped slightly as he heard his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room.**

"Real charmer, your cousin." Ginny grinned at Harry, not catching the glare Cho had sent her when Harry smiled back.

**Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid. There was no one in the house with him except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley, and they were plainly still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless.**

**Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; **

"You think that way about your family?" Hannah asked, looking both confused and concerned about Harry.

"We don't have the best relationship."

**it wasn't as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in any form, **

"How can someone hate magic?" Katie Belle asked.

"Ignortant muggles!" Pansy snapped.

**which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry's long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. **

"I hate you relatives." Angelina said with a frown. Harry deserved a better family and he got left with _them_.

**They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them or tell them anything about his life in the wizarding world.**

Hermione turned to Harry and whispered, "after these books, it will be revealed that Sirius is innocent and then you'll have him and be able to confide in him for anything and everything."

Harry smiled, he liked the sound of that.

**The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable.**

"Have you ever actually gone to them when you needed something?" someone, who Harry couldn't remember the name of, asked and he laughed.

He looked back at the person, seeing the serious expression on their face. "Oh, you were serious. I tried when I was younger but gave up when I was six."

There was a lot of grumbling while McGonagall shot Dumbledore a look but it was ignored.

**And yet it was because of Voldemort that Harry had come to live with the Dursleys in the first place. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry would not have had the lightning scar on his forehead. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry would still have had parents…**

**Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort **

Ron sighed, noticing Harry's expression fall as he realised where this was going. "Did they have to bring that up?"

**- the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had been gaining power steadily for eleven years — arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. Voldemort had then turned his wand on Harry; he had performed the curse that had disposed of many full-grown witches and wizards in his steady rise to power — and, incredibly, it had not worked. Instead of killing the small boy, the curse had rebounded upon Voldemort. **

"And destroyed him." Umbridge added gleefully and those who believed Harry looked stunned. Harry had lied to them? The Ministry had been right?

McGonagall snatched the book off her before scowling at the toad like woman. "She added the last part." Umbridge glared at the head of Gryffindor while most of the students glared at her.

"Wanna hex her with me." Ginny muttered to Hermione.

"Don't tempt me." Hermione muttered back.

**Harry had survived with nothing but a lightning-shaped cut on his forehead, and Voldemort had been reduced to something barely alive. His powers gone, his life almost extinguished, Voldemort had fled; the terror in which the secret community of witches and wizards had lived for so long had lifted, Voldemort's followers had disbanded, and Harry Potter had become famous.**

Harry scoffed bitterly. "Yeah, becoming famous for my parents death!"

**It had been enough of a shock for Harry to discover, on his eleventh birthday, that he was a wizard; it had been even more disconcerting to find out that everyone in the hidden wizarding world knew his name. Harry had arrived at Hogwarts to find that heads turned and whispers followed him wherever he went. But he was used to it now.**

"Unfortunately." Harry muttered to himself but his friends heard.

**At the end of this summer, he would be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts, and Harry was already counting the days until he would be back at the castle again.**

"That's really sad, Harry." Luna said from the Ravenclaw table. "You should try singing, it'll help pass the time."

Most girls giggled but Harry pointedly ignored them. "Thanks Luna, I'll bear that in mind."

**But there was still a fortnight to go before he went back to school. He looked hopelessly around his room again, and his eye paused on the birthday cards his two best friends had sent him at the end of July. What would they say if Harry wrote to them and told them about his scar hurting?**

**At once, Hermione Granger's voice seemed to fill his head, shrill and panicky.**

Hermione frowned at her friend. "Shrill and panicky?" she repeated dryly.

Harry sighed. "And you wouldn't have been panicked?" Hermione didn't answer.

**"Your scar hurt? Harry, that's really serious… Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I'll go and check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions… Maybe there's something in there about curse scars…"**

Most people laughed as she blushed.

**Yes that would be Hermione's advice: Go straight to the headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. **

Hermione hit Ron on the shoulder as he laughed but smiled as well.

**Harry stared out of the window at the inky blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort's; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions.**

**As for informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full length wizard's robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose.**

The great hall laughed, including most of the teachers, at the image while Dumbledore chuckled with his usual twinkle in his eyes.

**Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry's owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write?**

_**Dear Professor Dumbledore,**_

_**Sorry to bother you, but my scar hurt this morning.**_

_**Yours sincerely,**_

_**Harry Potter.**_

"You should've wrote to me anyway." Dumbledore said calmly, looking above Harry's head to his frustration.

"Thanks for the advice." Harry grumbled.

**Even inside his head the words sounded stupid.**

**And so he tried to imagine his other best friend, Ron Weasley's, reaction, and in a moment, Ron's red hair and long-nosed, freckled face seemed to swim before Harry, wearing a bemused expression.**

Now it was Hermione's turn to burst out laughing as Ron sent a mocking glare at his friend. Harry shrugged, unable to keep the smile of his face.

**"Your scar hurt? But… but You-Know-Who can't be near you now, can he? I mean… you'd know, wouldn't you? He'd be trying to do you in again, wouldn't be? I dunno, Harry, maybe curse scars always twinge a bit… I'll ask Dad…"**

The Weasley's laughed even harder. "He's got you perfect!" Ginny told Ron between laughter

**Mr. Weasley was a fully qualified wizard who worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, but he didn't have any particular expertise in the matter of curses, as far as Harry knew. **

"No, he doesn't." Fudge said snottily, avoiding the glares he was getting.

**In any case, Harry didn't like the idea of the whole Weasley family knowing that he, Harry, was getting jumpy about a few moments' pain. **

Ron rolled his eyes and sighed. "Your part of the family, idiot. There's nothing you can tell us that we'll find weird." He insisted.  
>"Remember, we're related to the twins." Ginny piped up. Fred and George just nodded in agreement.<p>

Harry nodded but it was clear he didn't fully believe them.

**Mrs. Weasley would fuss worse than Hermione, **

The Weasley's nodded.

**and Fred and George, **

Fred, George and Lee cheered.

**Ron's sixteen- year-old twin brothers, might think Harry was losing his nerve. **

The twins frowned at the younger boy. Why one earth would he think _that_?

**The Weasleys were Harry's favorite family in the world; **

The Weasley's all smiled widely at Harry while Ginny pulled him into a hug. Cho clenched her teeth so hard it hurt.

**he was hoping that they might invite him to stay any time now (Ron had mentioned something about the Quidditch World Cup), and he somehow didn't want his visit punctuated with anxious inquiries about his scar.**

**Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles. What he really wanted (and it felt almost shameful to admit it to himself) was someone like - someone like a parent: **

Harry looked down quickly at the sad looks he was now getting.

**an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience with Dark Magic…**

**And then the solution came to him. **

"Uh oh." Harry muttered, glancing up at Fudge and Umbridge.

"What?" Hermione whispered.

"I'm going to mention Sirius."

"It was going to come up sooner or later, Harry." Hermione sighed but looked just as worried about how everyone would react.

**It was so simple, and so obvious, that he couldn't believe it had taken so long - Sirius.**

There was a sudden silence at the name. It couldn't be _him_...could it?

**Harry leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room, and sat down at his desk; he pulled a piece of parchment toward him, loaded his eagle-feather quill with ink, wrote Dear Sirius, then paused, wondering how best to phrase his problem, still marveling at the fact that he hadn't thought of Sirius straight away. But then, perhaps it wasn't so surprising - after all, he had only found out that Sirius was his godfather two months ago.**

Fudge had gone white to red to purple - reminding Harry of his uncle - as he jumped to his feet. "YOU KNOW WHERE BLACK IS?" He roared.

Harry hesitated, unsure by the reminder of his uncle, before staring back defiantly. "He's innocent."  
>"Rubbish!" Umbridge hissed, while the rest of the hall watched causiously. "Sirius Black murdered thirteen people! He belongs in azkaban!"<br>"That's two innocent people you've sent to Azkaban, Fudge, I'll be worried about your job once these books are out." Harry yelled back, crossing his arms casually as the Weasley's and Hermione smirked at the worry that passed over the Minister's face.

"Enough!" Dumbledore snapped firmly as Umbridge opened her mouth to retort. "The book will explain!"

**There was a simple reason for Sirius's complete absence from Harry's life until then - Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifying wizard jail guarded by creatures called Dementors, sightless, soul-sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent - **

"Lies!" Umbridge snapped, before looking down at Dumbledore's sharp look.

**the murders for which he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, **

"As in, the Wormtail from the dre - er...whatever it was?" Dean asked and Harry nodded.

"His real name is Peter Pettigrew." He told him, earning gasps and whispered. Umbridge and Fudge shared a dark look.

**Voldemort's supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead. Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew otherwise, however; they had come face-to-face with Wormtail only the previous year, though only Professor Dumbledore had believed their story.**

**For one glorious hour, Harry had believed that he was leaving the Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered him a home once his name had been cleared.**

Harry smiled wistfully at this.

**But the chance had been snatched away from him - Wormtail had escaped before they could take him to the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life. Harry had helped him escape on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak, **

Malfoy shot Harry a glare while Fudge looked furious.

**and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Harry might have had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting him all summer. It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that he had so nearly escaped them forever.**

Harry's friends shot him sympathetic looks. "You'll never have to go there again." Ginny whispered.

**Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Harry, even if he couldn't be with him. It was due to Sirius that Harry now had all his school things in his bedroom with him. **

"Really? How?" Ron asked quietly.

Harry smirked. "I told them about Sirius...I just forgot to mention the fact that he was innocent." He told him, making Ron and those around them laugh. The rest of the great hall looked at them curiously but the group didn't explain.

**The Dursleys had never allowed this before; their general wish of keeping Harry as miserable as possible, **

The Weasley's and Hermione growled.

McGonagall sent Dumbledore a glare which he ignored pointedly.

**coupled with their fear of his powers, had led them to lock his school trunk in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this. **

"What?" Cho exclaimed and Harry's stomach did backflips. "How dare they?"

**But their attitude had changed since they had found out that Harry had a dangerous murderer for a godfather - for Harry had conveniently forgotten to tell them that Sirius was innocent.**

The great hall laughed, even the teacher who tried to look stern but weren't quite managing it.

**Harry had received two letters from Sirius since he had been back at Privet Drive. Both had been delivered, not by owls (as was usual with wizards), but by large, brightly colored tropical birds.**

"We'll have to inform the ministry about that." Umbridge whispered to Fudge who nodded in agreement.

**Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders; **

Harry smiled fondly at the mention of his pet.

**she had been most reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray before flying off again. Harry, on the other hand, had liked them; they put him in mind of palm trees and white sand, and he hoped that, wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted), he was enjoying himself.**

**Somehow, Harry found it hard to imaging Dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight, perhaps that was why Sirius had gone South. **

**Sirius's letters, which were now hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboards under Harry's bed, sounded cheerful, and in both of them he had reminded Harry to call on him if ever Harry needed to. Well, he needed to right now, all right…**

**Harry's lamp seemed to grow dimmer as the cold gray light that precedes sunrise slowly crept into the room. Finally, when the sun had risen, **

"What time did you get up?" Hermione asked, concerned about how much her friend had been sleeping.

Harry shrugged. "Early morning. I wasn't up for long."

**when his bedroom walls had turned gold, and when sounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room, Harry cleared his desk of crumpled pieces of parchment and reread his finished letter.**

_**Dear Sirius,**_

_**Thanks for your last letter. That bird was enormous; it could hardly get through my window. Things are the same as usual here. Dudley's diet isn't going too well.**_

The Weasley's all snorted while Hermione shook her head at them.

_**My aunt found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told him they'd have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window. **_

Those who knew what a PlayStation was looked stunned.

"What a brat!" Justin exclaimed.

_**That's a sort of computer thing you can play games on. Bit stupid really, now he hasn't even got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind off things.**_

_**I'm okay, mainly because the Dursleys are terrified you might turn up and turn them all into bats if I ask you to.**_

"He probably would, you know." Ron said smiling. "Maybe you should ask him to just for the fun of it."  
>"No." Hermione said quickly as Harry opened his mouth to speak. The two boys sighed.<p>

_**A weird thing happened this morning, though. My scar hurt again. Last time that happened it was because Voldemort was at Hogwarts. **_

"What?" Someone yelled in alarm.

"It is nothing for you to worry about." Dumbledore said calmly, ignoring Fudge muttering to himself.

_**But I don't reckon he can be anywhere near me now, can he? Do you know if curse scars sometimes hurt years afterward?**_

_**I'll send this with Hedwig when she gets back; she's off hunting at the moment. Say hello to Buckbeak for me.**_

_**Harry**_

**Yes, thought Harry, that looked all right. There was no point putting in the dream; he didn't want it to look as though he was too worried.**

**He folded up the parchment and laid it aside on his desk, ready for when Hedwig returned. Then he got to his feet, stretched, and opened his wardrobe once more. Without glancing at his reflection he started to get dressed before going down to breakfast.**

"To be honest, you often look like you don't own a mirror at all...or a comb." Ginny said teasingly and Harry blushed as everyone else laughed.


	4. The Invitation

The Invitation

**By the time Harry arrived in the kitchen, the three Dursleys were already seated around the table. None of them looked up as he entered or sat down. Uncle Vernon's large red face was hidden behind the morning's Daily Mail, and Aunt Petunia was cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horse-like teeth.**

"Your family are real charmers, Harry." Seamus snorted.

**Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual. This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. **

Madame Pomfrey pulled a face. "That is disgusting."

**When Aunt Petunia put a quarter of unsweetened grapefruit onto Dudley's plate with a tremulous "There you are, Diddy darling," Dudley glowered at her. His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report.**

"Compared to battling a troll, meeting Voldemort for the first time in ten years, defeating him, being called the heir of slytherin, battling a giant snake, defeating Voldemort's memory, having to face dementors all year, having your name put into the goblet of fire before facing Voldemort _again _and watch someone die." Ron said sarcastically. "Yeah, _Dudley's _the one who has it bad!"

**Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual: Aunt Petunia always insisted that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him, while Uncle Vernon maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway." **

Hermione frowned. "How does getting good grades make you a swotty little nancy?" she asked quietly.

"Ignore him, he's as dumb as his son." Harry said softly and Hermione relaxed slightly.

**They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report - "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" Aunt Petunia had said tearfully. **

Harry, Hermione and the Weasley's scoffed, letting everyone know that this wasn't the case.

**However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore.**

"That's not very surprising." Minerva muttered to herself.

"That's pathetic." Cho said, screwing up her nose.

**The school nurse had seen what Aunt Petunia's eyes - so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbours - simply refused to see: that far from needing extra nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.**

**So - after many tantrums, **

"How old is he?" Dean asked Harry.

"Fifteen."  
>"What a brat!"<p>

**after arguments that shook Harry's bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia - the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Dudley's favorite things - fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called "rabbit food."**

"Right, that is going to help your son." Marietta rolled her eyes.

**To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too. **

Madame Pomfrey frowned in concern. "Harry doesn't need a diet. He's already too skinny."

**She now passed a grapefruit quarter to Harry. He noticed that it was a lot smaller than Dudley's. Aunt Petunia seemed to feel that the best way to keep up Dudley's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Harry. But Aunt Petunia didn't know what was hidden under the loose floorboard upstairs. She had no idea that Harry was not following the diet at all.**

**The moment he had got wind of the fact that he was expected to survive the summer on carrot sticks, Harry had sent Hedwig to his friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently. **

"Thanks for that." Harry smiled at his friends who smiled back.

**Hedwig had returned from Hermione's house with a large box stuffed full of sugar-free snacks.**

Many students look horrified. "Sugar free?"

**(Hermione's parents were dentists.) **

"Which is?" Malfoy asked dryly.

"They tend to people's teeth." Hermione said simply.

**Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, had obliged with a sack full of his own homemade rock cakes. (Harry hadn't touched these; he had had too much experience of Hagrid's cooking.) **

Hagrid frowned, looking over at his friends who were avoiding his gaze. What was wrong with his cooking?

**Mrs. Weasley, however, had sent the family owl, Errol, with an enormous fruitcake and assorted meat pies. Poor Errol, who was elderly and feeble, had needed a full five days to recover from the journey. **

The Weasley's shook their heads fondly while everyone who remembered when Errol had crashed into a milk jug in second year laughed.

**And then on Harry's birthday (which the Dursleys had completely ignored) he had received four superb birthday cakes, one each from Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, and Sirius. Harry still had two of them left, and so, looking forward to a real breakfast when he got back upstairs, he ate his grapefruit without complaint.**

**Uncle Vernon laid aside his paper with a deep sniff of disapproval and looked down at his own grapefruit quarter.**

**"Is this it?" he said grumpily to Aunt Petunia.**

**Aunt Petunia gave him a severe look, and then nodded pointedly at Dudley, who had already finished his own grapefruit quarter and was eyeing Harry's with a very sour look in his piggy little eyes.**

"Leave him alone you pig!" Ron snarled.

"I didn't exactly want it anyway, Ron." Harry said softly but Ron was still glaring at the book.

**Uncle Vernon gave a great sigh, which ruffled his large, bushy mustache, and picked up his spoon.**

**The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit.**

Malfoy sneered. "Muggle's really need to learn some manners." He muttered to Pansy.

**Harry heard talking at the door, and someone laughing, and Uncle Vernon answering curtly.**

Hermione sighed. "Let me guess, you're going to get blamed for something."

**Then the front door closed, and the sound of ripping paper came from the hall.**

**Aunt Petunia set the teapot down on the table and looked curiously around to see where Uncle Vernon had got to. She didn't have to wait long to find out; after about a minute, he was back. He looked livid.**

**"You," he barked at Harry. "In the living room. Now."**

**Bewildered, wondering what on earth he was supposed to have done this time, Harry got up and followed Uncle Vernon out of the kitchen and into the next room. Uncle Vernon closed the door sharply behind both of them.**

**"So," he said, marching over to the fireplace and turning to face Harry as though he were about to pronounce him under arrest. "So."**

"So what?" Katie asked sarcastically.

**Harry would have dearly loved to have said, "So what?" but he didn't feel that Uncle Vernon's temper should be tested this early in the morning, especially when it was already under severe strain from lack of food. He therefore settled for looking politely puzzled.**

**"This just arrived," said Uncle Vernon. He brandished a piece of purple writing paper at Harry. "A letter. About you."**

Ron turned to Harry. "Is this about the letter mum sent?"

"Yep."  
>"What's wrong with it?"<p>

Harry smiled. "You'll see."

**Harry's confusion increased. Who would be writing to Uncle Vernon about him? Who did he know who sent letters by the postman?**

"Have you completely forgotten about me?" Hermione asked sarcastically.

Harry looked at her confused. "You send me letters by owl post," he reminded her and she rolled her eyes.

"Doesn't mean that I can't see you letters by the postman. I am a muggleborn." Harry just shrugged.

**Uncle Vernon glared at Harry, then looked down at the letter and began to read aloud:**

"He can read?" a Ravenclaw asked, sounding so shocked that everyone burst out laughing.

**Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,**

**We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry about my son Ron. As Harry might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place this Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets **

"He didn't buy them, that's for sure." Malfoy sneered. The Weasley's were about to stand up, glaring in Malfoy's direction. Hermione, Harry, Neville and Lee pulled them back into their seats.

"Guys, he's not worth it." Hermione said softly, glaring at the smug Slytherin.

**through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports. I do hope you will allow us to take Harry to the match, as this really is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn't hosted the cup for thirty years, and tickets are extremely hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Harry stay for the remainder of the summer holidays, and to see him safely onto the train back to school.**

"Like they'd care." Harry muttered.

**It would be best for Harry to send us your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is.**

**Hoping to see Harry soon,**

**Yours sincerely,**

**Molly Weasley**

**P.S. I do hope we've put enough stamps on.**

Hermione smiled widely. "How many did she put on?" she asked.

"Erm...I would say a reasonable amount." Harry said, trying his best not to laugh.

**Uncle Vernon finished reading, put his hand back into his breast pocket, and drew out something else.**

**"Look at this," he growled.**

**He held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley's letter had come, and Harry had to fight down a laugh. **

**Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys' address in minute writing.**

Half of the great hall laughed while the others looked around confused.

"She only had to put one on." Hermione explained to the Weasleys when she saw their expressions.

**"She did put enough stamps on, then," said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs. Weasley's was a mistake anyone could make.**

**His uncle's eyes flashed.**

**"The postman noticed," he said through gritted teeth. "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny."**

"Because it is!" Dean Thomas snapped in annoyance. "Get over yourself!"

**Harry didn't say anything. Other people might not understand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but Harry had lived with the Dursleys too long not to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Their worst fear was that someone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs. Weasley.**

"What does he mean by people like my mum." Ginny frowned.

"Witches and wizards." Harry explained softly, sqeezing her hand. Cho watched, not noticing how hard she was biting the inside of her cheek untill she could taste the blood.

**Uncle Vernon was still glaring at Harry, who tried to keep his expression neutral. If he didn't do or say anything stupid, he might just be in for the treat of a lifetime.**

**He waited for Uncle Vernon to say something, but he merely continued to glare.**

**Harry decided to break the silence.**

**"So - can I go then?" he asked.**

Hermione and the Weasley's chuckled fondly. Harry frowned at them. "What?" he asked confused but they just shook their heads.

**A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon's large purple face. The mustache bristled. Harry thought he knew what was going on behind the mustache: a furious battle as two of Uncle Vernon's most fundamental instincts came into conflict. Allowing Harry to go would make Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years.**

Minerva's lips thinned even more. She should never have let Dumbledore place the boy with those muggles!

**On the other hand, allowing Harry to disappear to the Weasleys' for the rest of the summer would get rid of him two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry in the house. To give himself thinking time, it seemed, he looked down at Mrs. Weasley's letter again.**

**"Who is this woman?" he said, staring at the signature with distaste.**

**"You've seen her," said Harry. "She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog - off the school train at the end of last term."**

**He had almost said "Hogwarts Express," and that was a sure way to get his uncle's temper up. Nobody ever mentioned the name of Harry's school aloud in the Dursley household.**

**Uncle Vernon screwed up his enormous face as though trying to remember something very unpleasant.**

**"Dumpy sort of woman?" he growled finally. "Load of children with red hair?"**

The Weasley's, Hermione and Harry growled, looking so dangerous that those sitting near them edged away quickly.

"He's one to talk." Ron said through his teeth.

"Does he own a mirror?" Hermione exclaimed.

**Harry frowned. He thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone "dumpy," when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall. Uncle Vernon was perusing the letter again.**

**"Quidditch," he muttered under his breath. "Quidditch - what is this rubbish?"**

All quidditch fanatics stared at the book in disbelief. "What the hell is he on?" Angelina exclaimed.

"Muggle's don't know about quidditch." Hermione reminded them.  
>"He still didn't need to call it rubbish!" Ron said firmly and his comment recieved nods of agreement. Hermione rolled her eyes.<p>

**Harry felt a second stab of annoyance.**

**"It's a sport," he said shortly. "Played on broom- "**

**"All right, all right!" said Uncle Vernon loudly. Harry saw, with some satisfaction, that his uncle looked vaguely panicky. Apparently his nerves couldn't stand the sound of the word "broomsticks" in his living room. He took refuge in perusing the letter again. Harry saw his lips form the words "send us your answer… in the normal way." He scowled.**

**"What does she mean, 'the normal way'?" he spat.**

"Owls." Zacharias said as if speaking to a small child.

Hermione just shook her head in exasperation.

**"Normal for us," said Harry, and before his uncle could stop him, he added, "you know, owl post. That's what's normal for wizards."**

**Uncle Vernon looked as outraged as if Harry had just uttered a disgusting swearword. Shaking with anger, he shot a nervous look through the window, as though expecting to see some of the neighbours with their ears pressed against the glass.**

"Your uncle thinks very weirdly, Harry." Luna said.

"That makes two of them." Lavender said and Pavarti snorted.  
>Hermione glared at them furiously. "Leave her alone!" She hissed, causing them to look at her shocked. It was no secret that she didn't believe in the things Luna said...why would she stick up for her?<p>

**"How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?" he hissed, his face now a rich plum color. **

"How can they expect us to accept muggles like that?" Pansy whispered to Malfoy.

**"You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back -"**

"Yeah, you did a great job." Ginny said sarcastically, thinking of the too-big rags she had seen Harry in.

**"Only after Dudley finished with them," said Harry coldly, and indeed, he was dressed in a sweatshirt so large for him that he had had to roll back the sleeves five times so as to be able to use his hands, and which fell past the knees of his extremely baggy jeans.**

"How could Dumbledore leave him with those horrible people?" Professor Sprout whispered to Minerva so no one else could hear her. She had serious doubts on whether the headmaster knew what was best for the boy and she wasn't the only one either.

**"I will not be spoken to like that!" said Uncle Vernon, trembling with rage.**

**But Harry wasn't going to stand for this. Gone were the days when he had been forced to take every single one of the Dursleys' stupid rules. He wasn't following Dudley's diet, and he wasn't going to let Uncle Vernon stop him from going to the Quidditch World Cup, not if he could help it. Harry took a deep, steadying breath and then said, "Okay, I can't see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I've got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know - my godfather."**

Everyone laughed. Fred and George patted Harry on the back.

**He had done it, he had said the magic words. Now he watched the purple recede blotchily from Uncle Vernon's face, making it look like badly mixed black currant ice cream.**

The laughter faded and instead everyone felt like they were going to be sick. "Lovely." Katie muttered.

**"You're - you're writing to him, are you?" said Uncle Vernon, in a would-be calm voice - but Harry had seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear.**

Harry smirked in satisfaction.

**"Well - yeah," said Harry, casually. "It's been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn't he might start thinking something's wrong."**

"This proves how manipulative Potter can be." Umbridge said smirking. Fudge nodded in agreement while everyone either rolled their eyes or ignored her completely. The twins swore loudly.

"Mr and Mr Weasley, please calm down." Minerva said sternly as her lips twitched upwards slightly.

**He stopped there to enjoy the effect of these words. He could almost see the cogs working under Uncle Vernon's thick, dark, neatly parted hair. If he tried to stop Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius would think Harry was being mistreated. If he told Harry he couldn't go to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry would write and tell Sirius, who would know Harry was being mistreated. There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do. Harry could see the conclusion forming in his uncle's mind as though the great mustached face were transparent. Harry tried not to smile, to keep his own face as blank as possible. And then –**

**"Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy… this stupid… this World Cup thing. You write and tell these - these Weasleys they're to pick you up, mind. I haven't got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your - your godfather… tell him… tell him you're going."**

Most of the students cheered while the teachers smiled.

**"Okay then," said Harry brightly.**

**He turned and walked toward the living room door, fighting the urge to jump into the air and whoop. He was going… he was going to the Weasleys', he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup! Outside in the hall he nearly ran into Dudley, who had been lurking behind the door, clearly hoping to overhear Harry being told off. He looked shocked to see the broad grin on Harry's face.**

**"That was an excellent breakfast, wasn't it?" said Harry. "I feel really full, don't you?" **

Everyone laughed, even some of the Slytherins, while the teachers were torn between disapproval (he is still only a child) and amusement (he shouldn't be treating Harry the way he had most of his life).

**Laughing at the astonished look on Dudley's face, Harry took the stairs three at a time, and hurled himself back into his bedroom.**

**The first thing he saw was that Hedwig was back. She was sitting in her cage, staring at Harry with her enormous amber eyes, and clicking her beak in the way that meant she was annoyed about something. **

"What's wrong with her now?" Ron groaned, remembering how vicious she'd been the last time he'd seen her annoyed. He rubbed his hands as if the cuts were still there while Hermione grimaced.

**Exactly what was annoying her became apparent almost at once.**

**"OUCH!" said Harry as what appeared to be a small, gray, feathery tennis ball collided with the side of his head.**

The Weasley's snorted and Ron sent Harry an apologetic look, though he couldn't keep his smile off his face.

**Harry massaged the spot furiously, looking up to see what had hit him, and saw a minute owl, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, whizzing excitedly around the room like a loose firework. Harry then realized that the owl had dropped a letter at his feet. Harry bent down, recognized Ron's handwriting, then tore open the envelope. Inside was a hastily scribbled note.**

**Harry - DAD GOT THE TICKETS - Ireland versus Bulgaria, Monday night. Mum's writing to the Muggles to ask you to stay. They might already have the letter, I don't know how fast Muggle post is. Thought I'd send this with Pig anyway.**

"_'Pig'_" Many said incredulously. Ron blushed.

"It's all her fault." He grumbled, pointing to his sister who just raised an eyebrow before shaking her head.

**Harry stared at the word "Pig," then looked up at the tiny owl now zooming around the light fixture on the ceiling. He had never seen anything that looked less like a pig. **

"His name isn't Pig." Ginny huffed quietly.

**Maybe he couldn't read Ron's writing. He went back to the letter:**

**We're coming for you whether the Muggles like it or not, you can't miss the World Cup, only Mum and Dad reckon it's better if we pretend to ask their permission first. **

"You were going to kidnap him again?" Hermione asked amused.  
>"It wouldn't class as kidnapping if he came voluntarily." Ron pointed out. "But if you put it like that then we're going to keep 'kidnapping' him untill Dumbledore comes to his senses." Hermione and Harry smiled as the rest of the Weasley's nodded in agreement.<p>

**If they say yes, send Pig back with your answer pronto, and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday. If they say no, send Pig back pronto and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday anyway. Hermione's arriving this afternoon. **

"Something which Ron was _very _happy about." Fred muttered to George. Ron, who had heard them, blushed deeply. His gaze went over to Hermione quickly and he was thankfull to see that she hadn't heard them.

**Percy's started work - the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Don't mention anything about Abroad while you're here unless you want the pants bored off you.**

**See you soon –**

**Ron**

**"Calm down!" Harry said as the small owl flew low over his head, twittering madly with what Harry could only assume was pride at having delivered the letter to the right person. "Come here, I need you to take my answer back!"**

**The owl fluttered down on top of Hedwig's cage. Hedwig looked coldly up at it, as though daring it to try and come any closer.**

Everyone snorted. "I like Hedwig." Collin smiled.

**Harry seized his eagle-feather quill once more, grabbed a fresh piece of parchment, and wrote:**

**Ron, it's all okay, the Muggles say I can come. See you five o'clock tomorrow. Can't wait.**

**Harry**

**He folded this note up very small, and with immense difficulty, tied it to the tiny owl's leg as it hopped on the spot with excitement. The moment the note was secure, the owl was off again; it zoomed out of the window and out of sight.**

**Harry turned to Hedwig.**

**"Feeling up to a long journey?" he asked her.**

**Hedwig hooted in a dignified sort of a way.**

**"Can you take this to Sirius for me?" he said, picking up his letter. "Hang on… I just want to finish it."**

**He unfolded the parchment and hastily added a postscript.**

**If you want to contact me, I'll be at my friend Ron Weasley's for the rest of the summer. His dad's got us tickets for the Quidditch World Cup!**

**The letter finished, he tied it to Hedwig's leg; she kept unusually still, as though determined to show him how a real post owl should behave.**

"Can we swap?" Ron asked.  
>Harry pretended to think about it for a second before shaking his head. "No chance."<p>

**"I'll be at Ron's when you get back, all right?" Harry told her.**

**She nipped his finger affectionately, then, with a soft swooshing noise, spread her enormous wings and soared out of the open window. Harry watched her out of sight, then crawled under his bed, wrenched up the loose floorboard, and pulled out a large chunk of birthday cake. He sat there on the floor eating it, savouring the happiness that was flooding through him. He had cake, and Dudley had nothing but grapefruit; it was a bright summer's day, he would be leaving Privet Drive tomorrow, his scar felt perfectly normal again, and he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup. It was hard, just now, to feel worried about anything - even Lord Voldemort.**

"Wish it was that way now." Harry whispered and Ginny leaned her head against his shoulder. They jumped when they heard a crash from the Ravenclaw table and all eyes turned to Cho who forced an embarrassed smile onto her face.

"Sorry, dropped my glass." She lied.  
>"That's the end of the chapter." Umbridge said, slightly disappointed. Nothing good on Potter <em>again<em>! Maybe this was just a prank to waste her time. He grip tightened on the book.


	5. Back to the Burrow

Back to the Burrow

**By twelve o'clock the next day, Harry's school trunk was packed with his school things and all his most prized possessions - the Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father, the broomstick he had gotten from Sirius, the enchanted map of Hogwarts he had been given by Fred and George Weasley last year.**

"What's this about a map?" Umbridge asked with a sicky sweet voice. The trio and the Weasley twins shared a glance - the last thing they wanted was for the toad to get her hands on the map, knowing their every move.

"Just a map." Harry said dismissively. Umbridge stared at them suspiciously before turning back to the book, she'll find out soon enough.

**He had emptied his hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food, double-checked every nook and cranny of his bedroom for forgotten spell books or quills, and taken down the chart on the wall counting down the days to September the first, on which he liked to cross off the days remaining until his return to Hogwarts.**

**The atmosphere inside number four, Privet Drive was extremely tense.**

"Isn't it always?" Ginny sighed bitterly.

**The imminent arrival at their house of an assortment of wizards was making the Dursleys uptight and irritable. Uncle Vernon had looked downright alarmed when Harry informed him that the Weasleys would be arriving at five o'clock the very next day.**

"Ah, come on! We're not that bad!" Ron protested, the twins and Ginny nodded in agreement while almost everyone snorted. Ron sent Hermione and Harry a mock glare, making them laugh even harder.

**"I hope you told them to dress properly, these people," he snarled at once. "I've seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They'd better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that's all."**

Hermione clenched her teeth together angrily. "What an ignorant pig!" She snapped.

**Harry felt a slight sense of foreboding. He had rarely seen Mr. or Mrs. Weasley wearing anything that the Dursleys would call "normal." Their children might don Muggle clothing during the holidays, but Mr. and Mrs. Weasley usually wore long robes in varying states of shabbiness. Harry wasn't bothered about what the neighbours would think, but he was anxious about how rude the Dursleys might be to the Weasleys if they turned up looking like their worst idea of wizards.**

"I don't think they would've really cared what he thought of them." Neville said as the Weasley's rolled their eyes.

**Uncle Vernon had put on his best suit. To some people, this might have looked like a gesture of welcome, but Harry knew it was because Uncle Vernon wanted to look impressive and intimidating.**

Ron scoffed. "If I remember rightly, it was _him _that was intimidated by us."

"Why? What happened?" Hermione asked suspiciously as she watched the Weasley's and Harry sniggered.

"You'll find out." Was all Harry said.

**Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. This was not because the diet was at last taking effect, but due to fright. Dudley had emerged from his last encounter with a fully grown wizard with a curly pig's tail poking out of the seat of his trousers, **

"What happened there?" Katie asked, fighting a smile.

"My uncle insulted Dumbledore in front of Hagrid." Harry told her, making everyone cringe and Hagrid blush slightly.

**and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had had to pay for its removal at a private hospital in London. It wasn't altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy.**

**Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn't even protest at the food (cottage cheese and grated celery). **

Ron looked scandalized. "In what way is _THAT _a meal?"

**Aunt Petunia wasn't, eating anything at all. Her arms were folded, her lips were pursed, and she seemed to be chewing her tongue, as though biting back the furious diatribe she longed to throw at Harry.**

**"They'll be driving, of course?" Uncle Vernon barked across the table.**

**"Er," said Harry.**

**He hadn't thought of that. How were the Weasleys going to pick him up?**

"That's a good question." McGonagall commented as she watched the small group on the Gryffindor table holding back so much laughter that it looked painfull.

**They didn't have a car anymore; the old Ford Anglia they had once owned was currently running wild in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. But Mr. Weasley had borrowed a Ministry of Magic car last year; possibly he would do the same today?**

**"I think so," said Harry.**

**Uncle Vernon snorted into his mustache. Normally, Uncle Vernon would have asked what car Mr. Weasley drove; he tended to judge other men by how big and expensive their cars were. But Harry doubted whether Uncle Vernon would have taken to Mr. Weasley even if he drove a Ferrari.**

"He reminds me of Malfoy." Ron said darkly, glaring over at Draco who glared back.

"Don't insult me by comparing me to that Muggle, Weasle!" He hissed

"The Malfoy's are a respectable family who deserve respect, obviously unlike Potter's family." Fudge said snobbily.

**Harry spent most of the afternoon in his bedroom; he couldn't stand watching Aunt Petunia peer out through the net curtains every few seconds, as though there had been a warning about an escaped rhinoceros. Finally, at a quarter to five, Harry went back downstairs and into the living room.**

**Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions. Uncle Vernon was pretending to read the paper, but his tiny eyes were not moving, and Harry was sure he was really listening with all his might for the sound of an approaching car. Dudley was crammed into an armchair, his porky hands beneath him, clamped firmly around his bottom. Harry couldn't take the tension; he left the room and went and sat on the stairs in the hall, his eyes on his watch and his heart pumping fast from excitement and nerves.**

**But five o'clock came and then went.**

"Forgot to ask, why were you late?" Harry asked Ron, who just shrugged.

"We were waiting for dad, didn't seem right to go without him considering how excited he was to be going to a muggle's house."

**Uncle Vernon, perspiring slightly in his suit, opened the front door, peered up and down the street, then withdrew his head quickly.**

**"They're late!" he snarled at Harry.**

"Wow! Aren't you clever!" Hannah said sarcastically.

**"I know," said Harry. "Maybe - er - the traffic's bad, or something."**

**Ten past five… then a quarter past five… Harry was starting to feel anxious himself now. At half past, he heard Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia conversing in terse mutters in the living room.**

**"No consideration at all."**

**"We might've had an engagement."**

**"Maybe they think they'll get invited to dinner if they're late."**

"Why the hell would I want to eat rabbit food?" Ron exclaimed, disgusted. The Weasleys, Harry and Hermione shook their heads fondly.

**"Well, they most certainly won't be," said Uncle Vernon, and Harry heard him stand up and start pacing the living room. "They'll take the boy and go, there'll be no hanging around. That's if they're coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don't set much store by punctuality. Either that or they drive some tin-pot car that's broken d- AAAAAAARRRRRGH!"**

"What?" Seamus asked excitedly. "What happened?" He didn't get an answer, however, as Umbridge continued on impatiently.

**Harry jumped up. From the other side of the living room door came the sounds of the three Dursleys scrambling, panic-stricken, across the room. Next moment Dudley came flying into the hall, looking terrified.**

Dean smiled widely. "This sounds like it's going to be good!" He said as everyone leaned forward, not wanting to miss anything.

**"What happened?" said Harry. "What's the matter?"**

**But Dudley didn't seem able to speak. Hands still clamped over his buttocks, he waddled as fast as he could into the kitchen. Harry hurried into the living room. Loud banging's and scrapings were coming from behind the Dursleys' boarded-up fireplace, which had a fake coal fire plugged in front of it.**

There was a stunned silence for a moment or two before most of the Great Hall burst out laughing and the rest (mostly muggleborns) remained confused. "You tried using the floo network?" Zacharias asked incredulously, staring at the Weasley's as if they were dumb.

The Weasley's, who had been laughing with everyone else before they heard Zacharias' tone, blushed brightly as Hermione and Harry glared at the Hufflepuff. "How much do you actually know about muggles?" Hermione asked but conveniently he didn't hear her.

**"What is it?" gasped Aunt Petunia, who had backed into the wall and was staring, terrified, toward the fire. "What is it, Vernon?"**

Cho rolled her eyes. "Hold on, let him check his crystal ball!"

**But they were left in doubt barely a second longer. Voices could be heard from inside the blocked fireplace.**

**"Ouch! Fred, no - go back, go back, there's been some kind of mistake – tell George not to - OUCH! George, no, there's no room, go back quickly and tell Ron-"**

**"Maybe Harry can hear us, Dad - maybe he'll be able to let us out-"**

**There was a loud hammering of fists on the boards behind the electric fire.**

**"Harry? Harry, can you hear us?"**

**The Dursleys rounded on Harry like a pair of angry wolverines.**

"This was hilarious." Harry chuckled to himself quietly.

**"What is this?" growled Uncle Vernon. "What's going on?"**

**"They - they've tried to get here by Floo powder," said Harry, fighting a mad desire to laugh. "They can travel by fire - only you've blocked the fireplace – hang on -"**

**He approached the fireplace and called through the boards.**

**"Mr. Weasley? Can you hear me?"**

**The hammering stopped. Somebody inside the chimney piece said, "Shh!"**

**"Mr. Weasley, it's Harry… the fireplace has been blocked up. You won't be able to get through there."**

**"Damn!" said Mr. Weasley's voice. "What on earth did they want to block up the fireplace for?"**

**"They've got an electric fire," Harry explained.**

**"Really?" said Mr. Weasley's voice excitedly. "Eclectic, you say? With a plug? Gracious, I must see that… Let's think… ouch, Ron!"**

Everyone laughed while Ginny shook her head with a smile on her face. "Oh, dad..."

**Ron's voice now joined the others'.**

**"What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?"**

"No, Ronald." Hermione smirked. "They were just standing there for fun." Ron stuck his tongue out at her but couldn't help but smile.

**"Oh no, Ron," came Fred's voice, very sarcastically. "No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up."**

**"Yeah, we're having the time of our lives here," said George, whose voice sounded muffled, as though he was squashed against the wall.**

**"Boys, boys…" said Mr. Weasley vaguely. "I'm trying to think what to do… Yes… only way… Stand back, Harry."**

**Harry retreated to the sofa. Uncle Vernon, however, moved forward.**

Angelina frowned. "Who would be stupid enough to do that?"

**"Wait a moment!" he bellowed at the fire. "What exactly are you going to -"**

**BANG.**

Everyone held their breath.

**The electric fire shot across the room as the boarded-up fireplace burst outward, expelling Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, and Ron in a cloud of rubble and loose chippings. Aunt Petunia shrieked and fell backward over the coffee table; **

Snape rolled his eyes; still the drama queen!

**Uncle Vernon caught her before she hit the floor, and gaped, speechless, at the Weasleys, all of whom had bright red hair, including Fred and George, who were identical to the last freckle.**

**"That's better," panted Mr. Weasley, brushing dust from his long green robes and straightening his glasses. "Ah - you must be Harry's aunt and uncle!"**

**Tall, thin, and balding, he moved toward Uncle Vernon, his hand outstretched, but Uncle Vernon backed away several paces, dragging Aunt Petunia. Words utterly failed Uncle Vernon. His best suit was covered in white dust, which had settled in his hair and mustache and made him look as though he had just aged thirty years.**

**"Er - yes - sorry about that," said Mr. Weasley, lowering his hand and looking over his shoulder at the blasted fireplace. "It's all my fault. It just didn't occur to me that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see - just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking - but I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate."**

**Harry was ready to bet that the Dursleys hadn't understood a single word of this. They were still gaping at Mr. Weasley, thunderstruck. Aunt Petunia staggered upright again and hid behind Uncle Vernon.**

**"Hello, Harry!" said Mr. Weasley brightly. "Got your trunk ready?"**

**"It's upstairs," said Harry, grinning back.**

**"We'll get it," said Fred at once. Winking at Harry, he and George left the room.**

The teachers groaned. "What are you gonna do?" McGonagall asked tiredly.

Fred and George looked up at them innocently. "What would give you the idea that we would do anything?" they asked together but didn't get an answer.

**They knew where Harry's bedroom was, having once rescued him from it in the dead of night. Harry suspected that Fred and George were hoping for a glimpse of Dudley; they had heard a lot about him from Harry.**

**"Well," said Mr. Weasley, swinging his arms slightly, while he tried to find words to break the very nasty silence. "Very - erm - very nice place you've got here." As the usually spotless living room was now covered in dust and bits of brick, this remark didn't go down too well with the Dursleys.**

"I don't understand why he bothered." Hermione sighed.

**Uncle Vernon's face purpled once more, and Aunt Petunia started chewing her tongue again. However, they seemed too scared to actually say anything.**

**Mr. Weasley was looking around. He loved everything to do with Muggles. Harry could see him itching to go and examine the television and the video recorder.**

**"They run off eckeltricity, do they?" he said knowledgeably.**

**"Ah yes, I can see the plugs. I collect plugs," he added to Uncle Vernon. "And batteries. Got a very large collection of batteries. My wife thinks I'm mad, but there you are."**

"That is rather strange." Justin nodded while the Weasley's shrugged. They were used to the strange things their dad did.

**Uncle Vernon clearly thought Mr. Weasley was mad too. He moved ever so slightly to the right, screening Aunt Petunia from view, as though he thought Mr. Weasley might suddenly run at them and attack. Dudley suddenly reappeared in the room. Harry could hear the clunk of his trunk on the stairs, and knew that the sounds had scared Dudley out of the kitchen. Dudley edged along the wall, gazing at Mr. Weasley with terrified eyes, and attempted to conceal himself behind his mother and father. Unfortunately, Uncle Vernon's bulk, while sufficient to hide bony Aunt Petunia, was nowhere near enough to conceal Dudley.**

**"Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?" said Mr. Weasley, taking another brave stab at making conversation.**

"They're not worth knowing." Harry said bitterly.

"Now, Harry - " Dumbledore started firmly but Harry cut him off.

"They're not!" He stared up at the headmaster but the old man had gone quiet, avoiding Harry's gaze.

**"Yep," said Harry, "that's Dudley."**

**He and Ron exchanged glances and then quickly looked away from each other; the temptation to burst out laughing was almost overwhelming. Dudley was still clutching his bottom as though afraid it might fall off. Mr. Weasley, however, seemed genuinely concerned at Dudley's peculiar behavior. Indeed, from the tone of his voice when he next spoke, Harry was quite sure that Mr. Weasley thought Dudley was quite as mad as the Dursleys thought he was, except that Mr. Weasley felt sympathy rather than fear.**

**"Having a good holiday, Dudley?" he said kindly.**

**Dudley whimpered. Harry saw his hands tighten still harder over his massive backside.**

**Fred and George came back into the room carrying Harry's school trunk. They glanced around as they entered and spotted Dudley. Their faces cracked into identical evil grins.**

The teachers groaned again and the twins had the same evil grins as they'd had in the book.

**"Ah, right," said Mr. Weasley. "Better get cracking then."**

**He pushed up the sleeves of his robes and took out his wand. Harry saw the Dursleys draw back against the wall as one.**

**"Incendio!" said Mr. Weasley, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him.**

**Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. Mr. Weasley took a small drawstring bag from his pocket, untied it, took a pinch of the powder inside, and threw it onto the flames, which turned emerald green and roared higher than ever.**

**"Off you go then, Fred," said Mr. Weasley.**

**"Coming," said Fred. "Oh no - hang on -"**

**A bag of sweets had spilled out of Fred's pocket and the contents were now rolling in every direction - big, fat toffees in brightly colored wrappers.**

**Fred scrambled around, cramming them back into his pocket, then gave the Dursleys a cheery wave, stepped forward, and walked right into the fire, saying "the Burrow!" Aunt Petunia gave a little shuddering gasp. There was a whooshing sound, and Fred vanished.**

**"Right then, George," said Mr. Weasley, "you and the trunk."**

**Harry helped George carry the trunk forward into the flames and turn it onto its end so that he could hold it better. Then, with a second whoosh, George had cried "the Burrow!" and vanished too.**

Everyone's eyes widened in shock. That was it? They didn't do anything to Harry's cousin?

**"Ron, you next," said Mr. Weasley.**

**"See you," said Ron brightly to the Dursleys.**

"Why?" Hermione asked slowly, not understanding why anyone would want to talk to these horrid people.

Ron shrugged. "I liked seeing them flinch everytime one of us spoke."

**He grinned broadly at Harry, then stepped into the fire, shouted "the Burrow!" and disappeared. Now Harry and Mr. Weasley alone remained.**

**"Well… 'bye then," Harry said to the Dursleys.**

**They didn't say anything at all. Harry moved toward the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr. Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at the Dursleys in amazement.**

**"Harry said good-bye to you," he said. "Didn't you hear him?"**

"Oh, they heard." Professor Flitwick muttered darkly.

**"It doesn't matter," Harry muttered to Mr. Weasley. "Honestly, I don't care."**

Hermione and the Weasley's sighed, glancing at Harry who honestly didn't look hurt or upset like most would. He'd had to put up with this his entire life...

**Mr. Weasley did not remove his hand from Harry's shoulder.**

**"You aren't going to see your nephew till next summer," he said to Uncle Vernon in mild indignation. "Surely you're going to say good-bye?"**

**Uncle Vernon's face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. But Mr. Weasley's wand was still in his hand, and Uncle Vernon's tiny eyes darted to it once, before he said, very resentfully, "Good-bye, then."**

"I wish dad had hexed him." Ginny sighed.

"There's always next summer." Harry pointed out and those close to him smiled at his hopeful tone.

**"See you," said Harry, putting one foot forward into the green flames, which felt pleasantly like warm breath. At that moment, however, a horrible gagging sound erupted behind him, and Aunt Petunia started to scream. Harry wheeled around. Dudley was no longer standing behind his parents. He was kneeling beside the coffee table, and he was gagging and sputtering on a foot-long, purple, slimy thing that was protruding from his mouth.**

Everyone burst out laughing while the teachers looked like they were having a hard time trying not to.

**One bewildered second later, Harry realized that the foot-long thing was Dudley's tongue - and that a brightly colored toffee wrapper lay on the floor before him.**

**Aunt Petunia hurled herself onto the ground beside Dudley, seized the end of his swollen tongue, and attempted to wrench it out of his mouth; unsurprisingly, Dudley yelled and sputtered worse than ever, trying to fight her off. Uncle Vernon was bellowing and waving his arms around, and Mr. Weasley had to shout to make himself heard.**

**"Not to worry, I can sort him out!" he yelled, advancing on Dudley with his wand outstretched, but Aunt Petunia screamed worse than ever and threw herself on top of Dudley, shielding him from Mr. Weasley.**

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" McGonagall rolled her eyes while everyone else just laughed harder, some of the teachers finally joining in. Even Snape looked like he was having a hard time keeping his face expressionless.

**"No, really!" said Mr. Weasley desperately. "It's a simple process it was the toffee - my son Fred - real practical joker - but it's only an Engorgement Charm - at least, I think it is - please, I can correct it -"**

**But far from being reassured, the Dursleys became more panic- stricken; Aunt Petunia was sobbing hysterically, tugging Dudley's tongue as though determined to rip it out; Dudley appeared to be suffocating under the combined pressure of his mother and his tongue; and Uncle Vernon, who had lost control completely, seized a china figure from on top of the sideboard and threw it very hard at Mr. Weasley, who ducked, causing the ornament to shatter in the blasted fireplace.**

**"Now really!" said Mr. Weasley angrily, brandishing his wand. "I'm trying to help!"**

**Bellowing like a wounded hippo, Uncle Vernon snatched up another ornament.**

**"Harry, go! Just go!" Mr. Weasley shouted, his wand on Uncle Vernon. "I'll sort this out!"**

**Harry didn't want to miss the fun, but Uncle Vernon's second ornament narrowly missed his left ear, and on balance he thought it best to leave the situation to Mr. Weasley.**

Everyone groaned, wanting to hear more.

**He stepped into the fire, looking over his shoulder as he said "the Burrow!" His last fleeting glimpse of the living room was of Mr. Weasley blasting a third ornament out of Uncle Vernon's hand with his wand, Aunt Petunia screaming and lying on top of Dudley, and Dudley's tongue lolling around like a great slimy python. But next moment Harry had begun to spin very fast, and the Dursleys' living room was whipped out of sight in a rush of emerald-green flames.**

Everyone was applauding as Fred and George stood up and took a bow.


	6. AN

Don't really like doing this and to those who had thought this was an update - I'm sorry. This is just to tell you all that I'm putting this story on hold, my heart just isn't in it at the moment and my personal life is getting in the way. I have ideas for other stories that I REALLY want to do but if I add it on to this one along with others that I'm doing on other sites then I'm gonna end up updating once every three years...which isn't far off at the moment. I'll be coming back to this but I'm not sure when. - - - TC


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